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Nov 27, 2017 at 10:47 AMNov 27, 2017 at 10:49 AM

“As a little girl people would ask me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I’d always tell them, ‘I want to be a girl singer,’” Wanda Jackson recalls in her new memoir written with Scott B. Bomar, “Every Night is Saturday Night.” “I don’t suppose I really could have been any other type of singer, but that’s what I told them.”

And a girl singer she became, in pretty short order: By age 17 she was earning record royalties that in one month amounted to $1,226.56, and by age 18, in 1956, she had earned over $15,000 by year’s end. “That doesn’t sound very impressive now, but that’s the equivalent of nearly $135,000 in today’s dollars,” Jackson recalls.

Not bad considering just a few years earlier Capitol Records had passed on her, with Ken Nelson of Capitol declaring, “Girls don’t sell records!”

But Jackson did sell records, and delighted thousands of fans at countless live shows over the years — influencing so many up-and-comers along the way it that she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as any “Early Influencer” in 2009. That she’s not necessarily a household name today is a) a crime and, b) all the more reason why people should read this breezy, fascinating autobiography.

Jackson, now 80, has an almost sing-songy writing style in “Every Night,” sounding not unlike a particularly sharp grandmother spinning tales from her youth, which is pretty much what she is. But the simplicity of the prose works for her, and the depth of the important relationships in her life — with her husband Wendall, her mother Vera and especially her father, Tom, who was her manager and protector during her early days on the road — couldn’t be clearer.

The bulk of the memoir focuses on Jackson’s early career, including her days singing in school, and then winning a contest to host her own local radio show for a month — which was quickly extended when listeners tuned in, and which led to a call from legendary country singer Hank Thompson asking her to perform with him.

“I said, ‘Gee, Mr. Thompson, I would love to, but I’ll have to ask my mother.’He cleared his throat.‘Good grief girl, how old are you?’‘I’m 14,’ I said, trying to sound as confident and grown-up as possible.”

But while Jackson doesn’t scrimp on details, “Every Night” also isn’t a tell-all — particularly when it comes to Elvis Presley, whom she famously appeared with and dated briefly early in both of their careers. “There’s a lot more to Wanda Jackson than my experiences with Elvis Presley!” she declares in response to endless media interest in the topic, and though she literally writes that “a lady never kisses and tells,” her story of her first visit to Elvis Presley’s bedroom at age 17 is definitely a keeper.

Elvis also was the first to convince Wanda to break out of her country comfort zone and into the rockabilly realm, which led to stardom in Japan, a comeback in Germany in the 1980s and her 2009 Hall of Fame induction, all of which Jackson relates with an apparent sense of wonder that it all actually happened, or that people still remember her music so fondly. Late in the book she tells of a 2006 show where she got a request for a dressing-room visit from Bruce Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, and assumed it had to be a prank. “I said, ‘Yeah, sure, send ’em on back. When the president gets here, he can come, too!’”

And even if she isn’t big on salacious details, she has plenty of unvarnished stories about challenges she faced, from early marriage problems — not the least of which was her husband’s jealousy over her long-ago relationship with Elvis — to the challenges of being a working performer and raising a family. “I don’t think I was a very good mother,” she admits, although she’s quick to point out that her kids disagree. She also speaks plainly about being born again in the 70s and how an affinity for proselytizing affected her as a performer. (“I never meant to be pushy, but looking back I realize I could have toned it down a bit,” she says.)

Jackson also devotes space to the impressive third act of her career, including “The Party Ain’t Over,” her 2010 comeback album with Jack White of the White Stripes — “There was a shyness about Jack that kind of reminded me of Elvis,” she says — and her current project, a rock album with Joan Jett. But the best part of “Every Night is Saturday Night” may be how clearly it conveys how Jackson’s raw talent and unbridled determination turned her into a trailblazer.

She may be of her time — she goes out of her way to say she’s not a feminist, per se — but her devotion to her craft makes her an inspiration to women performers in particular, right up through today, and beyond: It’s clear from the close of her memoir that for Wanda, the party still ain’t over.

— Peter Chianca runs the Gatehouse Media blog Blogness on the Edge of Town. Follow him on Twitter at @pchianca.

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